1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus such as an ink jet type recording apparatus and a method of controlling the liquid ejecting apparatus, and more particularly, to a liquid ejecting apparatus that generates a fluctuation in pressure of liquid within a pressure chamber by deforming an operation unit constituting a portion of the pressure chamber, which communicates with a nozzle, to thereby eject the liquid from the nozzle.
2. Related Art
Liquid ejecting apparatuses are apparatuses that include a liquid ejecting head capable of ejecting liquid as droplets from a nozzle and eject various types of liquids from the liquid ejecting head. A typical example of such a liquid ejecting apparatus can include an image recording apparatus such as an ink jet type recording apparatus (printer) which includes an ink jet type recording head (hereinafter, referred to as a recording head) and performs recording by ejecting ink in a liquid state as ink drops from a nozzle of the recording head. Besides, liquid ejecting apparatuses are used to eject various types of liquids such as a coloring material that is used in a color filter of a liquid crystal display or the like, an organic material that is used in an organic electroluminescence (EL) display, or an electrode material that is used to form an electrode. In addition, recording heads for an image recording apparatus eject ink in a liquid state, and coloring material ejecting heads for a display manufacturing apparatus eject a solution of each of red (R), green (G), and blue (B) coloring materials. In addition, electrode material ejecting heads for an electrode forming apparatus eject an electrode material in a liquid state, and biological organic material ejecting heads for a chip manufacturing apparatus eject a solution of a biological organic material.
For example, in the above-mentioned printer, when ink is not ejected from a nozzle due to factors such as clogging due to thickening of ink, that is, when so-called dot omission occurs, there is a concern that the quality of an image recorded in a recording medium may be decreased. Therefore, a technique of inspecting whether ink is reliably ejected from all nozzles has been proposed. For example, JP-A-2006-312329 discloses a technique of inspecting ejection abnormality of ink on the basis of a vibration pattern (hereinafter, referred to as residual vibration) of a vibration plate which is generated when an actuator (piezoelectric element) is driven.
Incidentally, in the recording head that is mounted to the above-mentioned printer, a plurality of nozzles are disposed in a high density. Thus, a pressure chamber communicating with each nozzle is also formed in a high density. As a result, a partition wall for partitioning the adjacent pressure chambers is formed to be very thin. For this reason, for example, at the time of an ejection abnormality inspection performed on the basis of the above-mentioned residual vibration, when a piezoelectric element corresponding to a nozzle to be inspected is driven independently, the partition wall may be bent toward the adjacent pressure chamber in association with a fluctuation in pressure of ink within the pressure chamber which occurs by the driving of the piezoelectric element. Thus, the amplitude of residual vibration is reduced due to the occurrence of a pressure loss. As a result, there is a problem in that the amplitude of a detection signal which has a sufficient magnitude is not obtained, which leads to a deterioration in detection accuracy.
Meanwhile, such a problem exists not only in an ink jet type recording apparatus having a recording head, which ejects ink, mounted thereto but also in other liquid ejecting apparatuses that are configured to detect ejection abnormality on the basis of residual vibration generated by driving a piezoelectric element.